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Thursday, February 24, 2005

For those who share our concern here at Viewpoint that the secular Left is the second greatest threat to freedom in the world today (second to Islamo-fascism with which it is often in covert sympathy) here is a new site you may wish to bookmark. It's called Discover the Network.org and its mission is to identify and track the people, agenda, ideas, tactics, and institutions that comprise the contemporary Left.

See here for a more detailed explanation of the purpose of this new site which may well become one of the most frequently consulted political sites on the web.

Those who are unpersuaded by the Darwinian creation myth that blind, purposeless forces could randomly produce a strand of DNA and the biochemical machinery that attend it in the trillions of cellular factories that make up a living organism are often derided for their lack of imagination and for their childish capitulation to the argument from personal incredulity.

The argument from personal incredulity is a syllogism which concludes from one's inability to imagine that impersonal nature could accomplish such astonishing wonders as the machinery which carries out protein synthesis, for example, that therefore these machines and processes must have been the work of an intelligent Creator. The argument occasions much merry-making among the sophisticates in the Darwinian establishment at the expense of the incredulous, simple-minded folk who hold to it.

Ironically enough, however, the sophisticates often resort to the same argument from personal incredulity themselves when it comes to belief in God. They argue that they can't imagine a Being possessing the capacities of omnipotence and omniscience, that they can't imagine a genuine miracle such as the revivification of a dead man actually happening, and therefore they don't believe such a Being or such phenomena exist.

Lest the reader think we exaggerate by suggesting that there are otherwise intelligent people who think this way consider this passage from Albert Einstein which recently crossed our desk:

"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts."

Set aside the question of whether the characteristics which Einstein associated with God are accurate, there is something very peculiar about the mind which thought up the near-incomprehensible implications of the theory of general relativity admitting that it cannot imagine individuals surviving physical death or conceive of a deity which possesses certain traits similar to those which humans possess. These are conceptions, after all, which mere mortals of average intelligence have been conceptualizing for thousands of years with little difficulty.

What, exactly, was Einstein's problem? It's not as if a personal God endowing the creation with some of the characteristics of His own Being is somehow logically contradictory, like the idea of a square circle. Nor, for that matter, is it like being asked to believe something akin to the claim that given enough time and resources the laws of physics, unaided by any intelligent input, could produce a computer with a Windows operating system.

We admit that we have a lot easier time imagining what Einstein could not than imagining what modern Darwinists apparently find so easy to conceive and believe. But then we're just simple-minded guys who find incredible things to be, well, incredible.

Bob Schindler, the father of Terry Schiavo, has an open letter at Newsmax.com in which he pleads for help to save his daughter's life. Because there may be some who don't know the background of this case we reproduce the letter here. If you'd like to respond just click on the link to Newsmax.

Dear Friend of Life,

By now you have probably heard about a young woman who is threatened with starvation in Florida. That young woman is my daughter, Terri. In 1990, through circumstances which are shrouded in mystery (and may involve a criminal act by Terri's estranged husband), my daughter was left severely brain-damaged.

But before I go any further, I must put an end to the lies and misinformation that are circulating around the country through the media concerning my daughter's condition. Contrary to anything you may have heard, Terri is NOT brain dead; Terri is NOT in a coma; she is NOT in a "persistent vegetative state;" nor is she on ANY life-support system.

Terri laughs, Terri cries, she moves, and she makes child-like attempts at speech with her mother and me. Sometimes she will say "Mom" or "Dad" or "yeah" when we ask her a question. When I kiss her hello or goodbye, she looks at me and "puckers up" her lips. This may not seem like much to you, but it means everything to Terri's mother and me. It tells us she is still here, she still knows us, and with therapy and time she can have some level of recovery.

I know that there are some hard hearted people who believe that due to my daughters condition, she is better off dead. Words cannot describe the pain and anger such sentiments cause us. This is our daughter, our little girl, and even in her disabled condition, she still has the right to life and the right to be loved and cared for by her family.

Why, you may ask, is Terry in danger of death by starvation? It is a long and outrageous story, but I'll give it to you as briefly as I can.

After the "incident" that left Terry in this condition, her husband Michael Schiavo sued various members of the medical community for money, saying that they did not treat or diagnose her properly at an early stage, and that he needed this money to provide for Terri's therapy and rehabilitation and care.

After lengthy court battles, he finally won upwards of $1.7 million under the guise of caring for our daughter, and then to our horror, he immediately began spending the money on himself and his Playboy lifestyle. Terri's estranged husband Michael Schiavo has been living with another woman for years, and has two children by her. He is determined to see Terri dead. Why? We believe it's because he gets to keep whatever money is left... and he may have even darker motives than that.

To add insult to all of this injury toward my daughter, Michael Schiavo is still her "legal husband" and therefore is her "guardian." And since they are not legally divorced, he controls whatever health care she will and will not get. We are not even allowed to know if she is getting aspirin.

In 1993 my family initiated litigation against Michael Schiavo solely for the purpose of acquiring medical, physical and neurological assistance for our daughter Terri. The litigation escalated in 1998 when Michael Schiavo petitioned the court to stop Terri from receiving food and water, thereby starving her to death.

In filing this legal action, he retained the services of a high profile euthanasia attorney and the financial backing of powerful euthanasia organizations. He also used Terri's medical rehabilitation money to underwrite much of the legal expenses associated with his effort to starve our daughter to death. We know that he has spent nearly $500,000 of Terri's money in attorney's fees for just one attorney trying to obtain a court order to have Terri starved to death. The very money that was supposed to be used for Terri's rehabilitation is being used to have her killed.

We very quickly discovered it was impossible for us to compete with the abundance of financial and legal resources the pro-death organizations were providing Michael Schiavo in their effort to kill Terri. They are pouring time and effort into her starvation because they want to use this case to further the agenda of legalized euthanasia.

My wife and I are not wealthy people. Throughout those years, we did not have any large organizations trying to help rescue our daughter. Consequently, we had to rely on the generosity of attorneys who were willing to offer their legal expertise at no cost or at reduced fees. The bottom line is that we are in the final weeks or months of our struggle to rescue our daughter from an untimely death by starvation. Death by starvation is very slow, and extremely painful. As you must know, it is against the law to deliberately starve an animal to death. There are members of the Florida court who would not treat a dog the way they plan to treat my daughter.

At this point we must pull out all the stops in our fight to rescue our daughter. As parents, we are desperate to save our daughter's life. As people who love life, we are determined to deprive the euthanasia advocates of successfully legalizing this form of homicide. We believe that their efforts to kill Terri are designed to set a precedent for the future eradication of defenseless disabled human beings. I was alive when Americans fought the Nazis; I do not want my daughter to meet the same fate of thousands of disabled people in Nazi Germany, and I do not want our country to go down that same dark path.

Friend, though we have never met, I'm asking you for your help. We desperately need your financial assistance to help our family continue the battle to keep our daughter from being starved to death. There are so many expenses in a case like this it is mind-boggling and overwhelming. Please click below to make a contribution now:

https://secure.cartlight.com/merchant/terri/?afid=maxb

Our adversaries believe that by our family's financial attrition and difficulties, they will attain their objective of killing our daughter. Presently, Terri's starvation may only be a few weeks away, unless we find the financial resources to prevent this atrocity from becoming a reality. I implore you to please help us. We are writing to you, because we believe you have a heart for justice and mercy. I'm asking you to put yourself in my shoes, and then do whatever you can to help our family. Whether it is $10 or $1000, we are desperate for the resources to fight this battle for our daughter's life at this critical juncture.

Please do whatever you can, and forward this e-mail to any friends or family that you have who you think might be interested in saving Terri's life. I thank you for your time, your concern, and I solicit your prayers for Terri and our entire family. These have been very trying times for us all.

Sincerely,

Bob Schindler Sr.

It's hard to believe that the courts are prepared to grant Michael Schiavo his wish to remove his wife's feeding tube, especially since there's some reason to believe that her condition may have been brought on by an act of physical violence by Schiavo himself. Schiavo has refused to divorce Terri so that her parents could take over her care and instead, with the help of various right to die groups, has decided that she is better off dead. One can only wonder at his motives. The culture of death has found some useful allies in the Florida legal system.